Matthew Heimer

A 3% return? It may be all you can expect

blogs.marketwatch.com — Most retirement planning exercises ask the saver to estimate an annual rate of return for their nest-egg investments. When the markets were soaring in the 1990s, some investors were blithely assuming 10% annual returns; in these chastened, post-crash days, many investors make more conservative assumptions of 5% or 6%.

Medicare Uncovered: Who should pay? Who can pay?

cjr.org — Elizabeth O'Brien's May 15 Marketwatch piece on proposed changes for Medicare is one of the best I have seen since the government's health program for elderly and disabled people surfaced last year as a likely target for the federal budget axe. It still is a target, and that makes O'Brien's effort all the more important.

Annuity firms subpoenaed over risky bets

blogs.marketwatch.com — Encore wrote earlier this month about trends in the usually staid fixed-annuity business that have raised hackles among some consumer advocates. In short: Big players in the financial-services industry have been buying companies that specialize in fixed-annuities and expanding those annuities' investments into more profitable but potentially riskier assets-including subprime mortgage securities, timeshare vacation homes, and in one case, a stake in a Major League Baseball team.

Tax trouble for ‘alternative’ IRAs

blogs.marketwatch.com — We've written before about retirement savers who use their IRAs to try to harness the potential rewards of entrepreneurship - whether by rolling their savings into a start-up or by owning stakes in privately held businesses through "self-directed" retirement accounts. But such savers have to walk a fine line to avoid running afoul of complicated tax rules.

Making your financial adviser measure up

blogs.marketwatch.com — If you're in the market for a financial adviser, it helps to have some way of measuring the quality of a particular adviser's service. In a recent article, an industry insider offers six parameters that can get you started. For all the complexity surrounding retirement finances, relatively few people actually seek out professional help.

A Nervy Approach to Retirement Saving

online.wsj.com — RICK KAHLER can't explain the mysteries of string theory, speak Mandarin or quote long passages from the Odyssey, but after buying and selling hundreds of properties for 30 years, he has a virtual Ph.D. in real estate.

DahlJonathan: Bittersweet: James Sterngold ...

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Are retirees tapping IRAs too soon?

blogs.marketwatch.com — After you reach the age of 70 ½, you're obligated to make a "required minimum withdrawal" (or RMD) each year from any traditional IRAs you hold (though certain exceptions apply, of course).

When your home state taxes your estate

blogs.marketwatch.com — Many affluent retirees breathed a sigh of relief when the fiscal-cliff compromise locked in a new estate tax threshold at the beginning of this year. Not only did the tax deal make permanent an exemption rate that had been a source of confounding uncertainty, it also set that rate at a level ($5.25 million for 2013) that was higher than many people had expected.